Waldemar Pabst

Waldemar Pabst (24 December 1880-29 May 1970) was a Freikorps commander from Germany who was responsible for executing Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht during his quelling of the Spartacist Uprising in 1919.

Biography
Waldemar Pabst was born on 24 December 1880 in Berlin, German Empire. Pabst fought in World War I, including the Battle of Verdun, but in 1916 he was relocated to the General Staff of the Imperial German Army. In 1918, Captain Pabst was given command of the Volunteer Division of Horse Guards, a Freikorps unit that helped in the suppression of Marxist and communist uprisings during the German Revolution. In 1919, Pabst ordered Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht's executions, saying that he wanted for Liebknecht to be executed by firing squad as a German but for Luxemburg to be beaten to death by an angry mob in a pogrom because she was a Jew. Pabst supported fascism during the 1920s, but his association with the Nazi Party was only loose, and he left for Switzerland before the Operation Valkyrie plot against Adolf Hitler in 1944, being aware that an attempt was to be made on his life. In 1955, Pabst returned to Germany, dying in Dusseldorf in 1970.